HOUSING LOANS

While all the above may provide valuable information and set hearts beating faster, excited on making their first house purchase, here are a few pointers to help get your loan approved, but only after you have gone through all else in Adis’ book with a fine-toothed comb.

Of late, housing loan rejections have made headlines. While many pointed fingers at Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) property cooling measures for negatively affecting the industry, few looked at the context of what these loan rejections led to.

For one, it generated additional housing ownership schemes and programmes to help the people own homes. It also highlighted the lack of lower-costing housing and pointed out that millennials just starting out in their careers, earning less than RM3,800 (roughly), are today categorised in the lowincome bracket. Most are unable to meet credit requirements, hence not eligible for end-financing for even terraced homes or condominiums in urban areas in bigger cities (which in general cost well above RM500,000). also dipped by 10% in 2015 compared to 2014 and the amount of loans approved has also taken a 14.6% dip, with a lower ratio of approval/applications at 50.2% in 2015 compared to 52.9% in 2014.

To this, the government announced the building of more affordable housing units under various assisted schemes and programmes (some mentioned in our part one article last week). The household income ceiling was also raised from RM8,000 to RM10,000 and the Rent-To-Own scheme was established and made available. However, BNM capped the loan tenure to a maximum of 35 years, only to curb the onset of retirees with debts.

In short, affordable homes and schemes are more available now yet insufficient/inefficient in meeting the people’s needs. With the new budget today, let’s see what’s in store for Malaysians in property.

Follow our article next week on another option to own your own “crib”, not necessarily the standard specs offered in the market.